DMP Mutual Support Thread - Part 7

Chillimonster

the_tooth_fairy wrote: »

Ps Who Had a birthday on the 17th that came to my mind, was it you Chilli, or Sugar? Hope I'm not making stuff up again, haha!

Yup Was me, and my kind family folks gave me £'s for my birthday, which is buying the takeaway tonight so is in effect a freebie!

Hopelessly_Hopeful

the_tooth_fairy wrote: »

Hello all! Well, I've just waved my magic wand, and lo and behold, you all have perfect teeth! (Well you would if you were in my surgery, anyway, no charge!). I am waiting to grant all the Christmas wishes you throw out into the ether towards me, so please send them and I will do my best, Promise.:A
Just a wee update from me, now 14 months in, £13900 paid off, so a quarter of the way there, nearly.
Still having problems with Sainsburys Visa. They denied hearing from Payplan after my annual review, saying that as my year had expired, they added on £103 to my bill. To be fair, when I emailed PP, they were able to prove the 'paper trail' and got me back £78. That's one to be careful of, mind, it seems they will do anything to rob you!
All our other creditors have been cool, even Halifax have wound their necks in, (they would need to, we've paid them £7k), I would def. recommend keeping a big file, when a statement arrives, I write on it what last months' total was compared to our original credit limit. It makes interesting reading!
Hope everyone is coping well,

ttfx

Ps Who Had a birthday on the 17th that came to my mind, was it you Chilli, or Sugar? Hope I'm not making stuff up again, haha!

Useful to know Tooth Fairy, thanks, and well done on 25%!

Twitty if I promise to get on the casting couch will you consider letting me play leading lady for the handsome prince? Dating defo on hold until DMP over, I need to pay my own way!

Enjoy the take away Chilli. Am doing the same with strictly!

HHx

jasperconran

well things have gone a bit pear shaped for me work wise this week So I had to redo our debt remedy with CCCS, but its not all bad cos originally it said we would be debt free in 4 years exactly, its now saying 5 years 7 months which aint bad!! considering the amount of debt we are in!

I cant wait to get all the paperwork sent off as Barclaycard are now ringing me like 8 times a day, I dont answer the phone but its wearing me down. Surely what they are doing is not right?? any advice on this one guys?

thanks

darwins_mum

Hi Jasperconran, can I suggest that you send Barclaycard a "cease and desist" letter, this will outline to Barclaycard that what they are doing constitutes harrassment, is against the law and you would like them to stop. I cant find the template letter that I sucessfully used for my predators, but it certainly stopped them in their tracks. Lloyds have removed all of my telephone numbers from their database, whenever I need to speak to them now and they ask me for contact details "for their records", I simply advise them that I have no contact numbers to give them.

Hopefully someone will be along shortly with a template for you to use, in the meantime, turn the phone off and give yourself a break. Don't let the bullyboy tactics cause you anymore stress.
take care

inamess_man

received another letter today this time from natwest

i think its good news? any advice required do i still make my adjusted payment as layout to all creditors this month (payday tommorow) or not, is this a relatively good letter to get!

basic outline below

""thank you for your financial statement,

before your offer of repayment is considered, a default nptice will be issued, formally cancelling the facility, as you are unable to make the required payments.

our debt recovery office will contact you shortly with regard to your proposals , please note interest will continue to be added to your account until prposolas are accepted

if your account is uptodate, i am unable to issue the default notice i will monitor your account closely and issue the relevant letters when appropiate

"

So i best not making any more payments because the account isnt in default yet? i suppose natwest is one of my "better" creditors in terms of i havent missed many payments with them

please any advice would be taken and appreciated

ianmak

ianmak wrote: »

Here's a funny story that won't make you laugh.

I had a phonecall from Link Financial today saying that they'd received a smaller amount this month than the amount on the Financial Statement (I've just increased my payments to all creditors).

On looking on Justabank (PayPlan) turns out that they'd paid all creditors a lesser amount to the tune of £10 in total. Not a huge amount, but when you're in a precarious position, anything like that will upset the applecart.

Now obviously this was a data entry problem that PP are rectifying now, and I still like the fact that they make the payments for me, but at the end of the day I begin to wander that I may as well do the DMP on my own!

For the newbies please don't be concerned as PP and CCCS do a sterling job, and I'm sure this is a one-off occurance. I also want to point out that if Link hadn't phoned me (or I hadn't answered it) it would have taken a lot longer for me to discover the error, peeing off my creditors in the process...

Just an update on the above. After speaking to PayPlan, they ended up distributing the £10 EQUALLY (£1 to each) to all creditors, as they can't make payments of less than £1 to creditors (I should have realised this).

As a consequence some creditors received more, others less (again).

I lodged a complaint (Mainly to find out HOW it happened) and got the report back from PayPlan today of their findings. The complaint was upheld, they've retrained the advisers involved, and blamed the IT System for the original mess up (I still blame data entry error). They also offered me £25 as a gesture of goodwill. To be honest I don't want it, though I'd accept a few quid for the extra payments I've had to make to the creditors.

Now, I still think PP and CCCS do a sterling job (certainly no worse than the fee charging companies, they could have made the same mistake). just wanted to remind people that these things can happen, and I wondered if anyone else would take the £25 offer...

pinkpower

Hi, I've been quiet for ages a well, a sign that things are going smoothly - or at least they were! 14 months in and about £12.5 K paid off. Of my 9 creditors all but 2 had stopped interest, and one of those had reduced it. Daughter number 1 has just started university, and we are having to support her quite a lot, so everything is a bit more of a squeeze.

At the end of September I had letters from M & S confirming that the agreements were renewed for another 12 months. (I have 3 accounts with them). One of these was the other creditor that refused to stop interest, I believe although they never said, because the payment calculated by CCCS was about the same as the minimum payment. In fact it's now £18 per month over the minimum, so no chance they will change their minds on that one. In fact its one of smaller debts so I will just have to live with it. Anyway, the minimum payment on my M & S credit card has just, I mean by about £2, fallen below the amount I'm paying. The immediate reaction from those warm hearted people was to apply 24% interest (£158!!) I wrote to them to query this, but have had no reply. This month's statement has arrived, charging £161 interest. Ahhh. I was about to write, when I decided to be brave and picked up the phone. The pleasant operative told me that as I could now meet my contractural payments, it was their policy not to freeze the interest. So I asked if they could lower it - oh no it wasn't their policy to do that either. But I said, you put it up in 2009 because of how I was 'managing' the account, so now I was sticking to the agreement why couldn't they reduce it? Apparently not, if you do your best to get on top of things, M & S will hit you hard and it's not their policy to help out.
Well I phoned up CCCS, more for someone to talk to than anything. When I told them the part about them putting up the interest rate, and refusing to lower it again, they told me that M & S can't charge me a higher rate of interest than was stated in my original credit agreement. They have advised me to write to request my credit agreement. When I have these, I'm to go back to them to plan the next move. Fingers crossed it will have some effect!
It seems to me that we will all get to a point, sooner or later when we exceed the minimum payments - do they all do this, or just some of them?

inamess_man

sorry to burden people with more questions had two further replies from halifax and m + s..

Halfax state the following

"we will suspend further action on the above account , on a temporary basis if you make a min paymnt of £57 per month (THATS THE AMOUNT I ASKED TO PAY) each month. Interest will be applied at a reduced rate of 12.69% pa and charges will be suspended.... this will last for a maximum period of 12 months....

continues with usual blurb and then

as you aware , this is a temporary position which lasts for a maximum of 12 months and at the end of this period the contractual monthly playment will be expected.

"

Ok i think this is the first reply im happy with! Has anybody any experience of whether after 12 months provided i have kept my payments halifax will extend this period?


M = S Reply is alltogether more baffling

"so that we offer you the right solution would you please confirm the change in your circumstances that have led to your current financial difficulties? when did your circumstances start? also are they likely to be short or long term?

Please respond within the next seven days.

"

Any help with a suitable reply will be appreciated, as will any advice as to what to do with the natwest query above

once again i am indebted to any help recieved

thanks

ianmak

inamess_man wrote: »

sorry to burden people with more questions had two further replies from halifax and m + s..

Halfax state the following

"we will suspend further action on the above account , on a temporary basis if you make a min paymnt of £57 per month (THATS THE AMOUNT I ASKED TO PAY) each month. Interest will be applied at a reduced rate of 12.69% pa and charges will be suspended.... this will last for a maximum period of 12 months....

continues with usual blurb and then

as you aware , this is a temporary position which lasts for a maximum of 12 months and at the end of this period the contractual monthly playment will be expected.

"

Ok i think this is the first reply im happy with! Has anybody any experience of whether after 12 months provided i have kept my payments halifax will extend this period?


M = S Reply is alltogether more baffling

"so that we offer you the right solution would you please confirm the change in your circumstances that have led to your current financial difficulties? when did your circumstances start? also are they likely to be short or long term?

Please respond within the next seven days.

"

Any help with a suitable reply will be appreciated, as will any advice as to what to do with the natwest query above

once again i am indebted to any help recieved

thanks

I'm with Halifax (Halifax, IF, and Sainsburys) and all stopped interest and passed over to DCAs. They all seem quite happy at the moment and each year ask for an update. I phone them up and they seem happy for me to carry on.

Some creditors will ask for a reason. I'm not sure what is the correct response, but I told them overcommittal (or something similar, I can't remember!). Obviously the above is the worst possible reason, but I couldn't come up with anything better!

inamess_man

thanks for your help

so just saying overcommital was ok in your case?

im thinking i should longer term case would you agree?

sent my repl to capital one today hope they will accept

first payments sent to haliax on new terms tonight feels good